


They Head for the Ocean

by farfarawaygirl



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, If they had actually made it out past the grounders, Un-betad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-27
Updated: 2015-01-27
Packaged: 2018-03-09 06:31:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3239789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/farfarawaygirl/pseuds/farfarawaygirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy still remembers that day, when he thought the world, their carefully constructed world, was ending. How Clarke had run back to them, face bloodied, wrists raw, eyes frantic and had urged them to pack up and leave. He was hurt and scared and sleep deprived, but she was there, she was alive. So he listened, and that changed everything. They lead their people southeast, seeking salvation, fleeing certain death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Head for the Ocean

Bellamy still remembers that day, when he thought the world, their carefully constructed world, was ending. How Clarke had run back to them, face bloodied, wrists raw, eyes frantic and had urged them to pack up and leave. He was hurt and scared and sleep deprived, but she was there, she was alive. So he listened, and that changed everything. They lead their people southeast, seeking salvation, fleeing certain death.  
That first night, after too many twisted ankles, and when Bellamy can barely see his own hand in front of him, he signals to them to stop. He is hoarse and his throat is killing him, so he’s not all that surprised when it falters as he tries to give orders. When his voice falters, Clarke picks up, finishing his thoughts, gathering their people. She issues orders, calms fears, soothes tempers, and all he can do, literally all he is capable of, is closing his eyes and sinking to the soft earth.  
Octavia and Jasper seek him out even as Clarke is still issuing commands, her voice is the only thing he can focus on, and Bellamy recognizes that Octavia is talking to him, but she sounds very far away. Abruptly Bellamy feels Clarke’s calm, cool hands, smooth and sure, except for the callouses on the edges of her fingers.  
“Clarke,” she is so close that the hot air that carried her name blows back in his face.  
“Don’t try and speak.” The feathered ends of her hair tickle as they slide over his skin. Bellamy remembers how once when he was sick his mother had allowed him to curl in her lap, and the ends of her hair had played across his shoulders and neck. That seems like a very long time ago, before Octavia, before earth, before a lot of things that Bellamy can’t really focus on right now.  
A lot happens in a very short time. Jasper takes his gun, Miller comes over, converses in quick low tones with Clarke, and leaves, the hard curve of his knee briefly pressing into Bellamy’s thigh. Small hands remove his jacket and ease his out of shirt, the chilled air a welcome relief. Bellamy can barely keep his eyes focused on the stars and trees swaying above him, he catches bits and pieces of the conversation going on around him.  
Octavia and Jasper stumble over each other, words overlapping, voice picking up and falling as they explain the parts Clarke missed.  
“Murphy! He tried to kill him.”  
“He was just hanging there, Clarke, I thought he was dead.”  
Tapered fingers soothe at the raw edges of his neck and chin, Octavia swims in front of him, swaying from side to side. Bellamy wants to grab her, hold her steady, hold her close, stop the world from spinning away from him. Before he can act on that urge, she is replaced.  
Waves of spun gold invade his blurry vision, a word from Science class bounces around his head, refraction. Refracted light, her hair in the torchlight. Clarke blinks down at him, her eyes remind him of the day they landed on earth; clear blue and containing multitudes.  
His lips stick together, “Princess,” his words cleave his throat into two halves, fire burns down the back of his throat and coats his tongue, “looks like you missed the party.”  
She leaves his field of vision, above him the stars are twinkling, he can hear the lines of poetry he memorized as a child beating over and over in his head. Bellamy is grasping for words, but his mind can’t hold them, the stars go out above him. One by one. 

 

Feather light pressure on the deep ache of his throat wakes Bellamy. Above him the predawn witchlight sends her face into shadow. All Bellamy can detect is the clinical detachment, the remoteness of her features, then Clarke’s eyes meet his and the light behind them switches back on.  
“I did this to you.” Clarke’s voice is soft and rough.  
All Bellamy can do is try to push the word ‘how’ out of his throat, every lette is a differently shaped knife forcing his way outward. Bellamy remembers how he told her not to see justice against Murphy, and he can feel the pressure of her guilt weighing on his heart heart like it has literally transferred to him. It is a struggle to pull himself upright, trying to wedge himself into a seated position, Clarke helps by propping her shoulder under his, easing him across the ground, and leaning him against a tree. It reminds him of the trip to the bunker, Bellamy remembers how Clarke defended him. He doesn’t have words, doesn’t think he can even talk, so he takes her hand instead. 

 

They walk.  
For what seems like an endless number of days. Up mountains, forging across streams, slipping downhill, sidestepping wild animals, and rarely finding rest.  
Twice someone nearly breaks bones tripping downhill, on day three Clarke teaches Octavia how to stitch someone up, Bellamy watches the, one gold head, one dark, the exacting patience from the teacher, the studious dedication from the student. Raven wakes up on day six, weak and scattered, Clarke digs her nails into his thigh, where they kneel beside her makeshift carrying cot, so sharply that he feels the skin pinch and split underneath his cargo pants. Finn scouts out and find a group of wild deer, Miller helps him take down seven of them. It is slow going, muddy, wet ground, broken up by stretches of rocky pavement that were once highway.  
Sometimes at night, when he is not on watch, and she is not tending to a dehydrated member of their rag tag crew, Bellamy feels her slip into bed behind him. Bed being a relative term, it’s usually a soft pile of leaves, tucked under the makeshift tenting of branches. He sleeps with her forehead pressed to the base of his neck, her hands fisted in the fabric of his jacket, wakes up with her hair filtered over his cheeks.  
What is that expression about being tested by fire? Something about how it strengthens you. They were a team before they left the dropsite, now they are galvanized. Not just Bellamy and Clarke, but all of them. This brings out something wild and string within all of them.  
They are a family. With problems and struggles all their own, but Bellamy taught them all a lesson about love when he took Jaspers place. Maybe the life they knew is gone, but maybe they can survive if they just stick together. Bellamy hopes that maybe some day it will be more than survival, it will be a chance to thrive. 

 

Neither of them get much sleep, that is the nature of leadership deep in hostile territory. Each day is a struggle. Bellamy and Clarke don’t spend much time apart, even still they both become gifted at finding the other in a crowd. Clarke learns to read the tightening of muscles across his back as she trudges on after him. Bellamy learns the soft sound of her breathing as she slips into fitful sleep.  
A week into this walk, he starts awake, the absence of her cold against his back, Bellamy finds her beyond the glow of the campfire, Miller’s eyes and nod letting him know where she has gone. Clarke’s hair is a halo of soft silver light, Bellamy makes his way towards her, following her like the ghost he feel like.  
“Maybe we should have let him die.” Bellamy tries to follow her train of thought, piece together who she means, her hands on the bruised column of his neck is the answer. “I should have let them kill him.”  
“Clarke,” his voice is rough from lack of sleep and the trauma that nearly being hung has wrought on him, “all that would do is put blood on their hands.”  
Clarke’s voice is barely a whisper, but Bellamy recognizes a prayer when he hears one, “I wonder if all the blood on our hands can ever be washed clean.”  
It is the familiar battle as he wants to comfort, but can’t find words. Bellamy who can give a speech and rouse an army, who always has the cutting remark and maxim to recite, cannot find the words to comfort Clarke. Her breath spills across his collar, Bellamy is painfully aware of how close she is standing, how the starlight is catching her eyelashes and how incredibly bad he wants to crush her to him.  
Clarke speaks, and breaks the spell. “I am so tired.” The words fill the space between them, pour into the cracks in Bellamy’s armour and squeeze at his heart. There is no response - it is not a question. There is nothing that Bellamy could say that could ease the pain of it all, he knows this; he is being swallowed alive by it too. Instead with uncharacteristic gentleness he leads her back closer to fire, Bellamy guides Clarke like she were a child, bringing them both to the broad base of a tree. He sits, leans against it, and settles her around him. Clarke’s head is pillowed in his lap, body curved up and around him, her knees touching his hip, one hand clutching the front of his jacket.  
Miller looks away, Bellamy settles his hands in her hair, whispers into the night, “Sleep, Princess.”

The days melt together; Bellamy knows he follows her tallow hair, hair like sunlight and spun gold. Knows he’d follow her into hell, maybe he already has. Two weeks of walking, they aren’t always making great distances, there are more obstacles then help out here. Raven in her stretcher. Buffy has a sprained ankle from a fall, and Clarke will only rest if Bellamy makes her. Two weeks and they reach the edge of Clarke’s map. It should be scary, it should make Bellamy terrified, but all he feels is freedom. This wild bubble of hope growing within him, they’ve left the Ark behind, left the dropship, maybe they can make it. For the first time maybe in his whole life, Bellamy feels hopeful. 

They use the world as they find it. Sleep in the remains of abandoned warehouse, scavenge from overgrown apple orchards, raid empty subdivision when they find them. They find clothes, honest to God pillows – musty and sometimes moldy, but salvageable, the things they carry grow. Life takes on a surreal tinge, Bellamy sees things he has no name for, and does so with his sister racing in front of him, his people gathered at his back, and Clarke at his side. There are still a million tasks that need to be completed, a million decisions to make, people to govern, shelter to find, fears to conquer, and he chips away at it. Clarke by his side. 

They head for the ocean.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first foray into fanfiction! I found this show by accident, and have never shipped a pair so hard! Not too much Bellarke this time, but an idea that has bouncing around my head since the finale. Comment, and come talk to me!


End file.
